A computer aided design (“CAD”) tool is used to create circuit designs for complex electronic products consisting of two or more interconnected circuit boards, such as personal computers and servers. The circuit designs for each printed circuit board are often created by different design engineers. The design engineers agree upon interconnectivity, and then each printed circuit board design is independently created with one or more connectors to accommodate signal connections between the printed circuit boards (and optionally between the printed circuit boards and other components of the electronic product). Physical pins of the connectors are identified by their corresponding pin numbers and are assigned to signal names of connecting signals for printed circuit board interconnectivity.
During development of the product, the printed circuit board interconnectivity is verified by the design engineers for correct geometry, orientation and pin-to-signal assignment: the geometry and orientation verifications involve the physical attributes of the printed circuit boards and parts; the pin assignment verification involves manual tracing of signal pathways through the pins of the connectors and through the underlying printed circuit boards. Since signal names often vary from one printed circuit board to another, and since the connections to any given board may be very dense and complex, the signal and pin assignment verification process has become increasingly difficult.
Design changes are typically communicated between the design engineers, each design engineer being responsible for making appropriate changes to the printed circuit boards within their responsibility. Such changes are easily missed or made erroneously. Further, errors in pin assignment, or in signal associations to pins, are easily missed in schematic reviews, particularly as printed circuit board connectors increase in density and size. In the development of large systems that include many interconnected boards, one of the most common problems involves misconnected signals between printed circuit boards.